A House Divided by Ben McNitt

Author:Ben McNitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

The first word and the last in the nullification debate, aside from the anonymous South Carolina Exposition, went to Daniel Webster. He had entered the Senate from Massachusetts as the controversy first arose. His reputation preceded him, probably the nation’s finest constitutional lawyer whose pleadings made their way into the language of Supreme Court decisions. His presence was imposing: stout, grim of countenance, a massive bald forehead, and deep-set piercing eyes. He had penchants for alcohol, gambling, and sumptuousness far beyond his income. Daniel Webster was a conservative, of old Federalist stock, but keen to court the West whose votes might someday help realize his ambition to attain the White House. He was also a leather-lunged orator, perhaps the best ever to set foot in the Senate, who could hold an audience spellbound for hours on end.

Webster’s 1830 Senate debate with Robert Hayne was a masterwork of drawing the South Carolinian away from his chosen ground of Western land policy and onto the Bay Stater’s own turf of constitutional interpretation, where he savaged the flaws of nullification in defending the Union. Two years later, when the crisis had fully erupted, Webster used Boston’s famed Faneuil Hall to denounce the doctrine as “nothing more nor less than resistance by force—it is disunion by force—it is secession by force—it is Civil War.”113 He regarded slavery “as one of the greatest of evils,” but referring back to the 1790 House report that concluded Congress had no authority over emancipation in the states, said, “The domestic slavery of the South I leave where I find it—in the hands of their own Governments.”114

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